I might be biased because I hang out in the slate subreddit and have been pretty attentive to The product as a whole since they announced it this spring but I think they're on to something assuming they can figure out how to build out the service and parts network.

The vehicle itself may be a runaway sales success but if there's only or two locations in each major state where you can get it serviced, that runaway success will be extremely short-lived.

In theory the simplicity means that it shouldn't be difficult to partner with any independent shop... No complicated or proprietary software theoretically means that any shop with tools and a lift can do the work.

Time will tell, though. I remain optimistic and eagerly await delivery of my truck.

I love electric vehicles, but I want something that lands somewhere between the DIY-esque Slate and the literally-costs-more-than-I-paid-for-my-house F-150 Lightning. I have a 23 Chevy Bolt EUV which is the sweet spot for me right now, I just wish it had AWD for the winters where I live.

Significant portions of the body and interior were not shared with general F-150 models... At least those parts most likely to be damaged in minor accidents... imagine having your work truck in the shop for 2-3 months for want of a corner light fixture.

I mean the biggest issue is that “trucks” like F-150 are actually used because of US tax system that exempts such massive vehicles from emmision taxes because they are work trucks. They are pretty ineffective work vehicles but some people just love them as a symbol.

That symbolism goes completely against electric/green vehicles. In other words - people who buy F-150 would never buy electric vehicle and people who are looking for electric truck for work wouldn't buy F-150.

Honestly sounds more like a regulation problem to me.

So many companies will not prioritize serviceability unless mandated by law.

> One is that pickups are a weirdly-politicized lifestyle choice in the US

Based on my personal experience traveling, there's a more practical reason for the political divide.

I spend a good portion of my life in rural parts of the US these days, where most of the residents are pretty conservative. But these are also parts of the country where I get nervous when I'm on 1/4 tank of gas. If you're routinely out in places where the nearest gas station might be > 50 miles away, you also see a dip in e-vehicles for very practical reasons.

When I'm at home in a city, it makes perfect sense to own an e-vehicle: typically I'm only driving a few miles a day, and the car spends most of it's time at my house or in a parking garage. When I'm out on business, and driving across hundreds of miles of barely inhabited land, I cannot imagine the stress of having an electric truck. It's not just about being 50 miles from a gas station, it's about the time it takes to charge on top of that.

In rural parts of the country, especially when you're out working, you can easily be putting on mileage combined with being far enough away from a charger that it just doesn't make sense to have an e-vehicle.

"More expensive to keep running" might depend on where you live. My wife and I both have EVs and we drive about 2000 miles/month. At just over $.06/kWh our EV charger tells us that we pay about $30/month for "fuel".

The first tire rotation on my car was free, and the next two were about $60 total. The first tire rotation on my wife's car was free. We're both going to need another rotation in a couple of months. Other that that, the original wipers on my car were squeaky and I replaced them for about $40. Oh! And I replaced the cabin air filters myself at the 7500-mile service intervals.

When we lived in a much bigger city, there were time-of-day rates and assistance with the cost of putting in a charger offered by the local for-profit utility. The kWh rate was just over 3X what we're paying now and even that is cheap compared to some regions.

Insurance doesn't seem cheap but we moved from Farmers to Amica and there are a bunch of discounts for having cars with lane departure warning, collision avoidance, etc.

I expect to replace the tires at 40,000 - 50,000 miles based on what other people report they get with their original tires. I do get sad little postcards from the dealer about having our cars serviced because there's no oil changes, the brakes should last forever because of regenerative braking, there's not a catalytic converter to steal, etc.

I'm guessing you're often either towing or you're doing a bunch of shortish drives for construction, etc. purposes--neither of which are a great match for electric.

He's only comparing highway driving. As he notes, city driving (or really anything with a lot of accelerating) will see the impact of weight on fuel consumption. Seems like regen brakes can help mitigate that for electric vehicles.

Side note, if he set the parking brake when getting loaded then the second tailgate denting might not have happened. It'll also help save the transmission.

Less than 20% of Americans live in most of the (very large) country. The rest live in cities and suburbs.

>Oh, an EREV is fancy way to say "hybrid" ok

Kind of. EREVs are what locomotives have been doing for a century (and to a lesser extent barges), which is called diesel-electric in that field. I agree the terminology is lacking, but EREVs are quite compelling (and their high market share in China supports consumer demand).

Hybrid: * ICE must run during regular operation (except for ~very short distances at ~very slow speeds) -- this increases operational costs (oil changes, economy, engine designed for torque and wide RPM range). * Complex drivetrain with wheels moved by electric motors and ICE, axles, etc. * Generally 10-40 miles of EV range

EREV: * Basically an EV with a short range, and whenever you want to charge the battery on the go (or use the waste heat from the ICE) it can use an efficient (Atkinson cycle) engine to do so. (Though american EREVs have used poorly suited engines for parts availability and enormous towing numbers) * Generally 50-200 miles of EV range * Think "EV for daily commute; ICE for road trips (and heating)"

IMO EREVs would've been a better development path than hybrids or pure EVs.[0] Immediately lower TCO in various interest rate environments via highly-flexible battery sizes, no cold or range anxiety issues, technically simple drive train and BTMS.

[0] I mean the Prius made a lot of technical strides given the battery technology/costs and familiarity the industry had with ICE at time. Tesla went full EV which is a very optimistic approach, and works well enough if you stick around the charging network, but the batteries are still expensive and heavy compared to a small ICE + tank.

The difference is what is actually powering the wheel. Hybrid is still primarily ICE. EREV is electric motors (with the ICE just charging the batteries).

I literally couldn’t think of a better truck than an EREV. Give me an ICE engine that can haul my trailer into the boondocks knowing I just need a gas station nearby, but can power my trailer off the battery.

I get that a hybrid is attractive because of the flexibility, but still the change is a strange decision. EVs are simpler to maintain than ICEs, but a hybrid is more complex, it adds the possible EV problems atop possible ICE problems.

Maybe keep the trucks as much they are now, just the essential changes to replace the engine? There's plenty of space on those huge trucks.

I am reading this article and thinking, darn there's going to be too many people like me trying to find these on the used market, and the prices will stay high.

Big fancy expensive powerstroke mega trucks with a person-high wall in the front look cool, and occasionally haul heavy things, but little white trucks that are busted up and 20 years old do all the duty. And those trucks drive way less than the range on the lightning each day. Once these lightnings price down to work truck level, I expect to see them on the road a long time.

I thought the same thing too, when it was announced. But I suspect, in addition to the price, that not being able to buy a medium or long bed version also harmed fleet sales. The short bed being the only option is probably a pretty big limitation for groups who are buying them as fleet vehicles.

it seems gas in vancouver (canada) is $4.50usd/gal ($1.18usd/liter)

that said, I'll bet the new one will be interesting for them, as I'll bet the gas motor can be used as an on-site generator which they might buy anyway.

Wasn't the original announced price like $39k? Did they ever hit that?

How it is better than a van?

> Why do you need a truck?

To haul dirt. To haul junk out to the dump. Etc.

Do people load their Transits with piles of dirt and mulch? I doubt it.

I live in the US and have a small house in the city, and I haul stuff like this all the time.

Yes, you can rent a pickup truck as needed from U-Haul, but that gets old real quick.

Yes, I would love it if there was a nice small or mid-sized truck with an extended bed available, because most trucks are overkill for my use case.

But this idea that no normal person needs a pickup truck a dozen times a year is just weird.

> Couldn’t you buy an electric van instead

Not sold (really) in the US. There's the VW electric van but that's more of a gimmick than anything else.

In the US, there's also just a pretty big infrastructure around tooling trucks for professional work. Not that that doesn't exist for vans in the US, it's just somewhat more common to see trucks having full toolsets on the side for quick access with a decent sized bed. The F350 is a major workhorse for that sort of thing.

I live in rural northern New England, and as well on-road I have plenty of either off road or unmaintained road usage year round, and a number of loads in those conditions that exceed the width of the vehicle (so wouldn't be public road legal). Also equipment and loads that exceed the height of the vehicle (which is road legal if properly secured). In principle a van with sufficient towing capacity and off road capability could use a trailer of some kind for those roles, I have nothing against vans per se, but since I don't need extra "interior space" the bonuses of vans don't help much vs the reduced flexibility and extra complications. I do keep my eye on them too because the line between "truck" and "van" can be fuzzy and if something sorta convertible or with some innovative ways to straddle the sufficient for my purposes came along I'd certainly consider it, but it hasn't been the case yet and the truck form factor is just really handy for making do with a surprise need on the spot far from anything with sufficient straps and bungie cords, without needing any other equipment.

It'd be nice if it could be a reasonable price too and not include a lot of the bling, though I'm perfectly aware a huge percentage of the truck buying audience cares about that a great deal vs having their truck all beat up and just wanting it to go forwards/backwards/left/right on demand reliably with a bunch of random stuff every day. But it'd be good to see anything at all that tried to work with the advantages of electric vs the limitations and both give a good truck experience and improve the experience for others that share the land, like with greatly enhanced visibility and better shapes that enhance safety for pedestrians. Don't need a ginormous engine to have very good torque with electric. I'm hopeful somebody will get there eventually but I guess the path has proven more winding then I'd once thought it'd be, I'd expected the iteration to be going pretty hard and fast by now (in America/EU I mean, it does seem to be moving real quick now in China).

Anyway, hope that gives some answer to your question. Just one solitary data point, I don't mean to do any extrapolation from this to the wider market, but I do actually use my truck pretty hard for truck things. We have compact efficient cars as well though for long distance travel and the like, my truck at least will spend 99% of its time within a 150 mile radius for work or any other use.

All of these are "not launched yet."

I thought the Slate looked interesting. Then the price started creeping up.

I'll just buy a Ford Ranger or Maverick instead.

The bed is only 4.5' long. The 5.5' short bed available on an F150 Lightning is too short for me, the ICE F150 with a 6.5' bed at least lets you have flat sheet goods with the tail gate down.

>I have heard great things about the Rivian trucks. They seem to have rabidly loyal customers, like the Teslas

Dead last...

https://www.usatoday.com/story/cars/research/2025/10/24/cons...

And have you seen the stories about fender benders?

https://www.thedrive.com/news/rivian-r1t-fender-bender-turns...

https://axleaddict.com/news/a-small-rivian-r1t-dent-just-cos...

https://www.rivianforums.com/forum/threads/7-months-later-an...

https://insideevs.com/features/669752/rich-rebuilds-rivian-r...

For $70-100K, I'd hope so.

I wish my ev has dope perks... too bad California is dead set on making EV charging more expensive then gas lol.

Just to clarify: We accept the security risk of kill switches in networking equipment, smartphones, laptops, servers, clouds, processors, bluetooth firmware and nvidia driver blobs, but we draw the line at civillian cars?

And in contrast to the listed items above, for civillian cars you can choose from dozens of countries who produce them. And if you cannot accept security risk of owning a "kill switch" car then you can still go back to gasoline or diesel.

I feel it's crazy to collectively accept security risks in vital electric equipment but suddenly cars are the one product that becomes a political issue. An unlike cars there are very limited alternatives with electrical equipment.

Cars are not critical infrastructure, also, the idea that China would turn off their EVs or starting to use them as weapons from the other side of the world is borderline absurd.

Occam's razor suggests that the simplest solution is the most probable: they are scared of the competition, because they know that if those cars enter the market they will dominate it.

> I saw sub 40 miles on a full charge claimed by some people

I've seen some people claim the earth is flat, too! That 40 miles figure had 0 connection to reality

There is a lot to be said for that perspective. I wonder if any PMs have considered making the bed of the truck a FRU that you can swap out at home.

There's always a chance the new Scout will fit that model. I'm not getting my hopes up though. It seems every company that releases an EV truck says they'll sell it for $30-40k and then suddenly it's $80k+.

They turned a gross profit, but they've only been selling vehicles for three years. It'll be several more before they are a profitable company. No company can build out two manufacturing hubs (hundreds of millions each) and turn a profit so quickly.

I'm not sure which dimensions you're talking about, but in terms of bed size the F-150 has been very consistent over the years (although I think Crew Cabs — although they always existed — have become more popular). The Ranger still cannot fit a full sized sheet of plywood flat in the bed.

Quick research: the new Ranger's bed size has only increased 0.9" (width) relative to the 1990 version. Bed length seems to be the same.

> given the testing that has been done on this it's the aerodynamics that matter more than the weight.

At highway speeds with minimal need for acceleration.

Trouble is, while most truck drivers pretty much never tow or drive off road, most of them imagine that they will, so the truck still needs to be capable of it in order to sell. Or at least needs to appear capable.

> cultural

Specifically for the American male, the F-150 is a form of gender expression and gender affirming transportation.

I bought an F-150 last year and compared the lightening to their new Hybrid-Powerboost models. The hybrid was better in every single way. I have the same 30amp generator hookup in the bed of the truck, but instead of finding a charger to refuel the truck I can simply put another 25gallons in the tank and head to another job/project.

If they hadn't made the hybrid truck so effective the lightning would have had a chance. I get around 20+mpg on average with a ~600lb load always in the bed.

That is one truck

The only two car companies to make any meaningful profit on EVs were founded as EV companies first?

That’s not that surprising. It’s very hard to make elephants dance.

If that remains true it means all these auto companies will be dead in 25 years, or eternally strung along on government support.

If there were no tariffs or other market barriers I get the impression that BYD would bulldoze the entire world and there would be one car maker with >80% of the market.

> Ford has lost multiples of tens of billions trying to do EVs.

To the observer, Ford has done nothing right in recent years except to build combustion F150s for US buyers.

I know they're marketing on price, but they really whiffed not offering AWD on that thing. Living in the Northwest, that's a total dealbreaker both from a skiing perspective and a getting-to-work-when-it-snows perspective.

Ah, maybe they’re catching on then. I haven’t run across one yet.

I got my extended range for $51,000